Voicemail systems allow a caller to leave a voice message if the desired recipient is unavailable. Past voicemail systems provided one voicemail greeting to be played for every caller, regardless of the identity of the caller. In this system type, all callers would receive the same voicemail greeting. Accordingly, it was desirable to design and build improved voicemail systems capable of maintaining multiple voicemail greetings and assigning each greeting to one or more callers based upon the identity of the caller as determined by the caller's telephone number.
Although improved voicemail systems are beneficial in targeting specific calling parties, they are deficient in providing multiple greetings based on the context of the recipient. Contextual factors such as the recipient's location, device characteristics, account characteristics and the like change from time to time and are telling of the recipient's availability. Accordingly, the recipient's availability changes, often times unexpectedly. In these situations, the recipient may miss or be forced to ignore an important call and the calling party may become disgruntled that the recipient did not answer.
Notwithstanding the respective improvements in the aforementioned systems, the industry has not yet turned its attention to new voicemail systems and novel methods for managing voicemail systems that allow multiple voicemail greetings to be presented to incoming callers based upon the present context of the recipient. This and other aspects of the present invention will become readily apparent from the description provided herein.